


Just Want Your Extra Time (and your kiss)

by BinarySunrise



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Eskimo Kisses, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff, Making Out, and el has max's back against her shitty brother, and touches of angst, bc el's lived a hard life, butterfly kisses, el and mike love each other a stupid amount, el wants to do everything she can with mike, like this is the el learns what a french kiss is fic, max and el are besties who love and support each other, mike needs to eskimo kiss it better, so it's his job to set limits poor boy, so much fluff… - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 14:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14717810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BinarySunrise/pseuds/BinarySunrise
Summary: In which El learns there is more than one kind of kiss and conducts an experiment. Mike is just along for the ride.……………………the mileven eskimo and butterfly kisses fic





	Just Want Your Extra Time (and your kiss)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not putting off updating anything by posting this i promise. i have dozens of one-shot drafts i wrote right after season 2 came out and this just happens to be the highest quality and the most complete. i kind of wanna publish some of the others? i was too nervous to post anything right after the new season came out but i'm going to chicago for a month (unexpectedly!) in two days and i wanna publish something before i go because i probably won't be getting a lot of writing done while i'm there. 
> 
> anyway again i'm nervous because there are a lot of good one-shots out there and i hope this is okay. so tell me if it needs work, if it's totally out of character, etc because i'm super anxious about it please and thank you!! <3
> 
> title is from the prince song "kiss"

Out of all of Mike’s friends, El is Holly’s favorite. Whenever El goes over to Mike’s house, Holly is always there to greet her, sometimes even before Mike. She’s usually sticky with juice and she sometimes tugs a little too hard on El’s curls when she plays with them, but El still always holds Holly as tightly as she can without hurting her. When Holly sees El and extends her chubby arms and smiles so her cheeks do a little dip that El has learned is called a dimple, El swoops her up and feels even stronger than she does when she uses her powers. She thinks it's because Holly trusts El to hold her and not let her fall, and trust is one of the things that make people love each other. 

I want you to trust me, kid, was what Hop said to her when he first found her in the woods, when she was freezing and starving and skittish as a baby deer. Holly is warm and flashes a missing tooth when she smiles, and El is reminded of how far she has come from the girl who snapped necks to escape a bad place, from the cold, heartbroken girl who hurt an old man to steal his jacket for warmth without hesitation. 

“Ellie, lookit my jack-o-lantern mouth!” she says, her little fingers already reaching for El’s hair. 

"What's a jack-o-lantern, Holly?" El asks. She loves asking Holly things because Holly never thinks it's strange that El doesn't know them, maybe because she's learning so much herself.

"It's a pumpkin. You know about pumpkins, Ellie?" El nods. She knows all about pumpkins, has heard about the way they rotted back in the fall when she was still hidden away and bad things were spreading all over Hawkins, festering. The pumpkins were a map of all the bad things she had caused to take root. “It’s a pumpkin, and you carve a funny face in it, with teeth like mine.” Holly stretches out the sides of her mouth so El can see all her teeth. “Then you put a candle inside and it lights up.”

“Is that why you call it a lantern?” 

“Yeah!” 

Mike usually makes El put Holly down after a few minutes and tells her to go play in her room so he and El can be alone, and Holly always makes a fuss. Mike is usually annoyed with her tears and threats, the huffy noises she makes as her little feet stomp back towards the kitchen, but it makes El happy that Holly doesn’t want to let her go. 

“Ugh. She never throws tantrums over the others. You’re her favorite,” Mike says with a roll of his eyes as he takes her hand. El’s pulse flutters against his fingers the second his skin meets hers, her palm tingling. 

“Favorite,” she repeats. It’s a word she’s learned. “Something you like best.”

“She definitely likes you best,” Mike says, grinning at her. “She likes you even better than she likes me. But that's okay because I like you best too."

He only says things like this when the others aren’t there, and they always make El blush fiercely and wish she had the words to say them to him first. 

“You’re my favorite too,” she says, and Mike turns bright red to the tips of his ears. It doesn’t really take a lot of words to make Mike blush, but she still likes to try sometimes, to surprise him. “Why am I Holly’s favorite?” she asks. 

“Because Holly has good common sense, unlike some people in this family,” Mike says, his eyes flashing dark. 

“I don’t say a lot. I don’t know a lot of things. I’m not funny like Dustin, or cool like Lucas, and I’m not talented like Will.” 

El says it in a steady voice, but she does worry about it sometimes, a lot of times. If her powers were to go away, what would be left? A girl who still has a hard time saying “please” and “thank you” because she had never needed those words when she lived in the lab. A girl who listens to her friends complain about learning Spanish in school because their teacher says too many things too fast, that they can't understand them all, and thinks: that is how I feel, all the time. A girl who has tried for nine months to learn what her friends have known for fourteen years. 

It is overwhelming. Too much at one time, a word El feels frequently. 

Mike squeezes her hand a tighter. There’s a crease between his brows El wants to smooth away with her thumb. 

“Well, you’re probably Holly’s favorite because you’re pretty and girly, and Holly loves pretty, girly things. And you don’t talk down to her—talk to her like a little kid,” he explains, “you just treat her the same way you treat everyone else. That’s one of the reasons why you’re my favorite, actually. You’re the least prejudiced person I’ve ever met.” 

“What is prejudiced?” 

“It means when you judge someone before getting to know them based on what you see on the surface. Like, um, if I said you were weak because you’re a girl, that would be prejudiced.”

El understands. She thinks "prejudiced" must be why Mike gets angry sometimes about things people say about Will. Maybe they call him a fairy because he is small and pretty, and fairies are small and pretty. Prejudiced is judging what you see on the surface. El files it away and hopes she remembers.

Mike is still talking. His face is intense in the way it gets when he needs El to understand what he’s saying. 

_You hurt me. Do you understand? What you did sucks!_

_No, El, you’re not the monster. You saved me. Do you understand? You saved me._

"And you're so kind, El. You only knew me for a day and you'd never met Will at all, and you'd just escaped from that place. You had every right to not care about him. You had every right to run away and take care of yourself. But you did care. You helped me find Will.”

“It is the best thing I ever did,” El says honestly. Imagining life if she had only cared about saving herself that day, if Benny’s death had scared her into a shell she couldn’t get out of, if Mike’s kindness only pushed her deeper inside herself—she can’t imagine what would have happened to her, where she’d be now. If she’d be now. 

"It's the best thing I ever did, too. Befriending you and befriending Will. I’m so glad I found you, El.”

They spend the first hours of the evening in the old fort, Mike reading to her from another book about Hobbits. He read the first one to her over the new walkie-talkie Hopper bought her after the Snowball, every night she was still stuck inside. El loved it, and she learned a lot of words from it, so Mike started reading the second one. It’s a little scarier than the first one, and there are four hobbits instead of one, but El thinks she likes it just as much. 

Holly sneaks downstairs to say goodnight to El when her bedtime comes. She barrels into the basement like a missile, her golden pigtails flying as she flings her arms around El. 

"'Night, Ellie," she says and looks at El’s face with the spark of an idea. Suddenly, her chubby hands close over El’s cheeks and she brings their faces very close, rubbing their noses together. "Eskimo! Eskimo!" she sings, drawing away. Her eyes light on Mike, and he groans. 

“No, Holly, do it for El again. She’s never been Eskimoed before.” 

Holly considers it for a moment and seems to decide that rubbing noses with El is nicer anyway. She does it again, and El blinks in confusion. She knows touching lips is kissing, yes, but is touching noses the same?

Holly places a smacking kiss on El’s cheek when she’s done, and scrambles back out of her lap, running up the stairs with pitter-pattering footfalls, her cries of “Eskimo! Eskimo!” echoing through the basement.

Mike is smiling the smile that means he’s trying not laugh. El turns to him, cocking her head. 

“What is Eskimo?” 

“An Eskimo is a type of person that lives in a very cold place, like Antarctica. They wear fuzzy clothes to keep warm and live in houses made of ice called Igloos,” Mike explains, the smile still quirking his mouth. 

El’s brow scrunches in confusion. 

“What does that have to do with bumping noses?”

“That’s an Eskimo kiss. I guess Eskimos do it, maybe because their lips are covered up because of the cold and their noses are the only things that can touch.”

That makes sense to El, so she nods. She remembers how cold her lips were when she was still in the woods, how they could barely move sometimes even when she needed to open her mouth to eat. It wouldn’t be nice to kiss with those lips. 

“Is it a…paton—between friends and family kiss?” 

“I don’t think it’s just platonic,” Mike says, and El commits the word to memory. She’d heard it once, from Hop, when she asked why Joyce kisses her on the head but Mike and some of the couples on T.V. kiss on the mouth. A platonic kiss is a kiss that feels nice but doesn’t make you tingly.

“You do it with someone you’re very close to, though. Like parents and kids, or siblings. And some couples, I guess.” 

“Mike?” El asks, and Mike turns his head to look at her. El is aware of how close they are in the fort, his soft breathing a gentle warmth on her face. His knees touch hers when they sit together inside it now, something that hadn’t happened when he first found her. 

Inhaling deeply, El takes his face in her hands the way Holly did. His cheeks are hot beneath her fingers, a pretty shade of pink that reminds El of a fading sunset, his freckles nearly disappearing beneath his blush. She takes in his big, dark eyes, his soft black hair, his prominent nose, and leans forward, touching hers to his. Mike’s eyes blink once, then flutter closed, and he turns his head slightly from side to side so that his nose brushes against hers in a way that almost tickles. His cheeks are even pinker than before, but he’s smiling. It’s the same smile he had at the Snow Ball after they kissed. A smile that is also a promise. El lets her forehead tip against his just like she did then, his breath a pleasant tickle against her mouth. 

She leans forward a little more, moving her nose to the side, and kisses him. She can feel Mike’s smile as he kisses her back, his lips a brief, firm pressure that ends all too soon when he draws away. 

“Mike?” 

“Uh huh?” Mike’s face is very red, but he’s smiling even wider. 

“Can we Eskimo kiss more?” 

“Yeah, we definitely can,” Mike says, nodding so hard his hair shakes. "But we can't tell the guys. They'll never let me hear the end of it." He touches her nose gently with one finger like he's trying to press a button, and snatches his hand away when El goes cross-eyed trying to keep his finger in her vision. Before she can ask why he bopped her on the nose, he kisses her again. 

El melts into him and forgets to ask.

………………………………………………………

El doesn’t get to go over to Max’s house often, because her brother is bad and Hopper knows it. All the boys know that Billy is an asshole (a word Hopper had sharply reprimanded her for using, muttering about how “that Wheeler kid” was corrupting her), but El is the only one who’s seen Max in short sleeves, who is familiar enough with bruises shaped like fingerprints to know what the marks on Max’s arm mean. 

El remembers being dragged along a hall with steel fingers wrapped around her arm, squeezing so hard there was a ring of purple there the next day. She knows what is to feel helpless to someone else’s touch. The worst thing is that there’s nothing she can do. Max has forbidden her to tell, and El promised. She has done bad things, things she wishes she could erase, but El has never willingly broken a promise, and she will not betray Max. 

She can make little things happen though, to discourage Billy. He stopped hurting Max for nearly six months when he was scared of her, so El makes him scared. She causes a door to slam into his back when he walks into a room, all on its own. Once, a plate drops on his head from the open cabinet. Billy isn’t very smart, but he does understand messages written in his language: violence is a voice he can listen to. He can't know for sure that El is the one causing him to get hurt, but they only happen when she's in the house, and he leaves them alone while she’s there. 

The night before El’s first day of school, El and Max have a sleepover with Hopper’s explicit instructions to be completely ready when he comes to pick her up at six-three-zero the next morning. Hop reluctantly agreed after a lot of arguing and one plate smashed telekinetically that spending time with one of her friends before school was a good idea, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Mike. Max was El’s second choice, and she was a lot easier to get Hop to agree to. 

Billy and Max’s stepfather (a man who does not do anything bad that El can see, but makes her skin go bumpy with fear when he’s around all the same) are both out, because Max’s stepfather is having a “good long talk” with Billy. El refuses to feel sorry for him. Max’s mother is a sweet, soft-voiced woman with bright red hair that’s always puffy on top, and she lets El and Max mess around with her makeup before showing them how to put it on properly. 

“You have beautiful eyes, honey,” she tells El as she rubs something brown into the crease of El’s eyelid. "So big and expressive, and the nicest shade of brown. I can see little flecks of gold all through them. And if that's not the cutest little nose I’ve ever seen! You’re very pretty.” 

El smiles. "Pretty" still brings her back to the pink dress, the blond wig, Mike looking at her with something different in his eyes, like he didn't ever want to stop taking her in. He still tells her she looks pretty every time he sees her, and sometimes he'll say something more specific he likes about her. Sometimes it’s her dress, sometimes it’s her wild, curly hair. Once he told her she had the cutest nose, after an Eskimo kiss. It feels almost just as nice to hear it from Max’s mom. 

“El is so pretty it’s stupid. Every guy in school is gonna be all over her tomorrow, and Mike’ll lose his shit and make us all miserable,” Max says. She’s pawing through a teen magazine that’s bubblegum pink with bright green lettering. She’d threatened El with ‘grievous bodily harm, I don’t care if you have telekinesis, I’ll find a way’ if she ever told the boys she likes reading them. 

“Language, honey,” Max’s mom says absently, smudging black powder into the lower rim of El’s eye, under her bottom lashes. 

“Seriously,” Max continues, paying her no mind, “Mike’s such an idiot around you, I swear. You’re both idiots about each other. I still can’t believe you were ever jealous of me being around him when he looks at you like the sun shines out your ass. I love you, El, but man are you stupid.” 

“I was stupid,” El agrees. 

“Be nice to your friend, Maxie,” Max’s mom reprimands, looking at El like she’s afraid El will feel sad about being called stupid. El has learned that certain things are okay when the right person says them, or if they are said in the right tone of voice. Max calling her and Mike stupid was one of those things. 

“This is my way of being nice, mom, chill. El’s cool with it, aren’t you El?” 

“I’m cool with it. Nerd,” she tacks on, because Max smiles big and crooked when El calls her names. El doesn’t understand why, but now that they’re friends she likes making Max smile. 

After their makeup is done (and Mrs. Hargrove even gives El a couple of things she no longer needs with instructions on how to use them; an eyeshadow palette and a few small applicators, mascara for her eyelashes, and a deep rose lipstick that El is supposed to rub into her lips and the apples of her cheeks with the tip of her finger), Max’s mom gets up to leave.

“You girls don’t stay up too late, now. You have a big, busy day tomorrow.” 

“We won’t,” Max says with a roll of her eyes. “We totally will,” she mouths at El, who has to fight back a giggle. 

“Goodnight, Mrs. Hargrove. Thank you for everything,” she says politely. Hopper had spent as much time working on her manners as anything else, and El prides herself in her politeness now that she understands that you have to say things like “thank you”, “you’re welcome”, and “it was a pleasure to meet you”. You have to listen even when people say things you don’t want to talk about, you can’t just wander wherever you want when you are in someone’s home without asking permission, and it’s always good to knock before opening a closed door. 

“It’s my pleasure, sweetheart. But Maxie, honey, you aren’t done yet.” 

“Mom, no! Not in front of El."

“Well, you’ll just have to deal, won’t you? You’re still my baby girl, even if you are starting high school, and that means you’re getting butterflies.”

Max’s mom leans towards Max, tilting her chin up with her hand, and Max bats at her hand in a way El knows is only for show. The older woman leans forward, her cheek brushing Max’s. El watches in complete bafflement as she blinks over and over, Max rolling her eyes dramatically before blinking her eyes too. 

“Alright, I’ve had my fun,” Mrs. Hargrove says as she draws back. She looks at El, who knows she has what Dustin calls her lost puppy look. “Never done butterfly kisses before, sweetheart?” she asks with a kind smile. 

El shakes her head, the pieces falling into place. She knows from Eskimo kisses that you can "kiss" with things other than lips, like noses. Butterfly kisses must be a special eyelash version of an Eskimo kiss.

“Just normal lip kisses and Eskimo kisses.” 

“Well, butterfly kisses are a lot like Eskimo kisses, honey, except that instead of rubbing noses, you flutter your eyelashes together instead. Would you like one?” 

Max gives her a “don’t you dare” look, so El nods just to tease her. Mrs. Hargrove swoops in immediately so her cheek touches El. Her skin is smooth and powdery, and she smells like peaches. Her eyelashes are very soft, and when they flutter against El’s, she can imagine how butterfly wings against her cheek might feel the same. She flutters her own eyes back, giggling at the tickle. 

"Other cheek!" Mrs. Hargrove announces cheerfully when she draws back. El repeats the process happily. She thinks she likes butterfly kisses just as much as Eskimo kisses, though she'd have to try them with Mike to know for sure. She likes everything better when it's with Mike.

“Okay, mom, you had your fun. El and I need our beauty sleep.” 

“Oh, alright. Though maybe I should give you an Eskimo kiss for old time’s sake.”

“Mom!” 

“Alright, alright, I’m leaving. Goodnight, girls.” 

They chorus a goodnight back to her, and then El and Max are left alone. Max turns to her the second the door shuts, her eyebrows raised.

“So where’d you learn about Eskimo kisses huh? Because I’m willing to bet a lot of money it wasn’t Hopper.” 

El crosses her arms and waits silently. Mike had told her she couldn’t tell any of their friends, but Max is going to figure it out on her own. She hopes he won’t be mad at her when she finds out. 

“Okay, let’s think. Who do we know who likes any excuse to be stupidly adorable with El in every possible way, who could rub noses with her for hours being all blushy and starry-eyed without getting bored…”

“He’ll be upset if I tell you,” El shrugs, and Max lights up. 

“Oh my god, I can’t believe this. Wheeler is even more of a girl than I thought. This is the most disgustingly cute thing I’ve ever fucking heard. Oh, El, allow me to rub my big ol’ honker against your delicate snoot, which rests on your face with the elegance of a perfect ski slope, the prettiest button—“

“Shut up,” El replies, because she’s learned this is a thing friends can say to each other without being mean, and throws a pillow at her. 

School the next day goes by in a blur. An exciting, wonderful blur packed with all the new things El’s already learning. She can tell her classmates are bored, even though it’s only the first day, but she soaks everything up with unbridled enthusiasm—attendance policies, bathroom passes, assigned reading lists and course calendars. She pays special attention to her Biology and English classes because she knows they are Mike’s favorite subjects. She likes her Biology teacher especially. He is a pleasantly plump older man who talks to them about why it’s important to know how to formulate and test a hypothesis. It sounds a lot like El’s plan to wait until ranking her favorite kinds of kisses until she can try them all with Mike. Mike is her control, and the kind of kiss is her variable. It only makes her more eager to butterfly kiss him the next time she sees him. 

Because they don’t have any classes together, the next time she sees him is lunch. Mike is waiting outside her English class when it gets out, her schedule in his hand and a brilliant smile on his face. El runs to him without thinking about the students around her, her own smile so wide it hurts her cheeks. 

“Good first day?” he asks, eyes shining. El nods emphatically, her curls bouncing. 

“The best.” 

“I’m glad,” he says, taking her hand. He takes one step in the direction of the cafeteria, but El stops him, directing him to the lockers, away from the flow of students rushing towards lunch. 

“Mike, wait.” 

Mike does, looking at her expectantly, cheeks slightly flushed. He’s much taller than her now, so El has to get up on her tiptoes to reach him. She takes his face in his hands and he bends so that she can reach better, blush deepening. 

“Do you know what a butterfly kiss is?” she asks. 

“Yeah, sure, my mom used to do that before—when I was younger.”

“Good,” El says decisively, and brings her cheek to his, fluttering her eye the way Mrs. Hargrove did. Mike’s dark hair tickles one side of her face, and this close to him, she can see the shapes of his individual freckles, how long and dark his own eyelashes are. After a moment, he flutters back, and the baby hairs on the back of El’s neck stand up with how close she feels to him. Not just because her face is touching his, but because there is a charge between them, something electric passing through the flutters of their eyelashes. She draws back breathing a little faster than before and sees that Mike is similarly affected. His face is bright pink. 

“Good?” she asks. Mike swallows, his throat bobbing. He nods. 

“Definitely.” 

“Other eye now,” Elle says. Mike flutters first this time, his mouth quirking up when she shivers ever so slightly. 

“Fucking hell, it’s only the first day and they’re already making out against the lockers. All right, lovebirds, let’s not get arrested for public indecency—is that a fucking butterfly kiss?” 

Mike jumps away as if burned at Dustin's voice, running a hand through his hair. His face is so red, El is worried the other parts of his body aren't getting enough blood.

“Nope. No butterfly stuff going on here. El and I were just talking about her first day.”

“With her face two inches away from yours.” 

Mike scowls. 

“Maybe we were kissing and you interrupted.” 

Dustin nods his head firmly, his eyes sparkling. 

“You lips definitely weren’t touching. You were butterfly kissing her. Legit butterfly kissing her, Michael. You are the softest fucker in this school, I swear. What’s next, huh? Eskimo kisses?” 

Mike’s face turns from red to purple. 

“Shut the fuck up, Dustin.” 

“El will give me the truth. El, was Mike here being a total girl and butterfly kissing you?” 

El looks at Mike, who’s fuming, then to Dustin, who looks like her answer could be equivalent to Christmas coming early. Friends don’t lie, but she also doesn’t want to put Mike on the spot, to embarrass him. 

“We were, but it was my idea, not Mike’s. I’m doing an experiment,” she announces. Mike and Dustin both look curious at that. 

“Oh? What kind? Is it how-many-different-ways-can-I-make-Mike-cream-himself kind of experiment, because I’m pretty sure you set him off once just by looking at him from the right angle.”

“Dustin I swear to god if you don’t shut up right now—“

"It's a kissing experiment," El says loudly. They both look back to her, Mike's face full of mingled hope and embarrassment, Dustin doing the snorting thing he does when he was close to laughing so hard he can’t talk. “I’m deciding which kind of kiss I like best. Mike is my constant, and the type of kiss is my variable.”

Mike completely forgets about Dustin, looking at El like she’s hung the moon as he takes her hands, eyes shining. 

“That’s so cool, El! I guess we kind of skimped on practical science when you were catching up so I’m glad you’re interested.”

“So butterfly kisses are on your list?”

“Yes. I am doing normal lip kisses, Eskimo kisses, butterfly kisses, and…I haven’t thought of any others.”

“Oh, I can help you think of some others—ow, that hurt you fucker!” 

Mike withdraws his fist. 

“Come on, El, let’s go to lunch.” 

Dustin teases them the entire way to the cafeteria, and Mike gets huffy and embarrassed. But his smile never quite fades, nor does the blush staining his cheeks, and when his thumb starts to rub little circles on the inside of El’s palm, she knows what his answer is.

And El thinks she may like Butterfly kisses the tiniest amount more than Eskimos. 

…………………………………………………

There are kisses on T.V. that are different from the kisses her and Mike share. El sees the same kind of kiss in the hallways at school with older kids (and, once in a while, a couple their age). These kisses are messy and violent looking, all wet open mouths and breathy noises that make everyone else uncomfortable. El thinks this kind of kiss looks like they are trying to eat each other, and she can’t imagine ever, ever wanting to try it herself. How can trying to eat someone you like enough to kiss be a good thing? She knows there has to be a reason people do it—if it feels as gross as it looks, couples wouldn’t get in trouble for doing it nearly every day of the week—but she can’t figure out what it is. 

She tries to ask Hopper, once. He turns nearly puce, shutting off the T.V.

“Nope, you are not even thinking about that, kid. No matter what it is, you are too young.”

Maybe he still doesn’t know her as well as he thinks he does in some ways because nothing piques El’s curiosity like him telling her she’s too young to know about it. 

“When will I be old enough?” she asks defiantly. Hop grimaces, crossing his arms. 

“When you’re my age. When you sport a lovely salt-and-pepper beard like the one you see here, you can ask me all the questions you want. Until then, zip it kid, or you and Wheeler are going to be even more supervised than you are now. 

El huffs but doesn't argue. Hop already has an annoying habit of barging into her room whenever she and Mike are studying with a flimsy excuse, an effort El thinks is pretty pointless considering they always have to keep the door open anyway. The idea that he might become even worse is scary enough for El to agree to just about anything.

“At least I know he’s not pressuring you into anything,” Hop mumbles, ruffling her hair, and the matter is dropped.

El figures out midway through her first semester of high school that it must be a sex thing. That kind of kiss on T.V. usually turns into clothes coming off and panting, breathy moans that make El run to turn the T.V. off before Hop can see what she’s watching, and it makes sense that the two would be connected. El still finds the idea gross and can’t understand why anyone would want to do either, and wants to know why people still do it all the time anyway. 

She gets the answer, not from Hop or her health teacher, but from Dustin. 

“What’s up, fuckers?” he asks cheerfully when he arrives ten minutes late to Mike’s latest campaign. “Guess where I was?”

“Trying to be as late as possible so we had to sit around and wait for your ass to show up instead of getting a move on?” Mike suggests. Dustin rolls his eyes. 

“I,” he begins grandly, his smile smug, “was making out with Camille Christenson behind the bleachers.”

“Dude, stop fucking lying. The only thing you were making out with was your own hand,” Lucas says. Dustin’s smile doesn’t fade. 

“Um, excuse you, Lucas, but as a man of fifteen, is it really too hard to believe that I would get some hot loving before you prepubescent asswipes?” 

“’Course it’s not,” Will says kindly, and Dustin nods. Lucas still isn’t convinced. 

“Well, you can’t exactly prove it, can you? I’m not believing you made out with a cheerleader without proof.”

"Joke's on you because I can." Dustin pulls down the collar of his shirt, and the room instantly fills with shocked gasps. El squints, seeing a shiny red mark that looks a little like El’s knee when she tripped badly in Will’s house and got carpet burn. 

“Holy shit, she gave you a hickey?” Mike asks. 

“Uh huh. And in case you are wondering how this hot make-out sesh came about, poor Camille was crying on the bleachers ‘cause she keeps getting benched during the games and I, being a gentleman, offered my services in comforting her." 

“I don’t understand,” El speaks up. “Why did she hurt you?” 

Four heads turn to El in bewilderment. 

“The mark,” El explains, “it looks like it hurts. Why are you happy about it?” 

Realization clicks on Dustin’s face, and he gives Mike a cat-that-got-the-canary look. Mike’s cheeks are pink, and he’s looking steadily at the table. 

“Oh my god. Jesus—you’re telling me that Mike here has never given you a hickey during one of your frenching sessions?” 

“You already said it, you asshole, you’ve made out before any of us, and it’s not a fucking race,” Mike says angrily, his hand tight around El’s. 

“Uh, I didn’t mean to include you and El in that statement. I mean, what do you do when you don’t let us come over because you wanna spend alone time with her? Don't tell me you just spend hours exchanging Eskimo and butterfly kisses?" 

“Wait,” Lucas interjects, “Mike Eskimo kisses El?" 

“Man, does he ever. I actually walked in on them—“

“Not the point, dipshit! The point is that El and I aren't rushing into anything because we lo—like each other too much for that and that's all there is to it." 

"Were you going to say love?" Will asks curiously, looking at Mike in awe. Mike's face turns even redder.

“N-no, I was not!”

“So, El,” Dustin interrupts, strolling over to her. “This badge of honor on my neck is a hickey. You get one when someone sucks on your neck hard enough for the skin to bruise.”

El wrinkles his nose. It sounds like he’s talking about vampires. She knows about vampires from a book they're reading for class, about an ancient creature that appears in your bedroom at night to suck blood from your neck. It's a scary book; El has had enough of creatures out for blood. Creatures that hunt at night, smelling your weaknesses. She knows she would never want to hurt Mike like that. 

“Why would you want to do that?” she asks. 

“Because it feels fucking amazing. Trust me. It’s like the difference between closed mouth kissing and French kissing. One is okay and one is like fireworks. Got it?”

“French kissing?” El repeats. Mike groans, resting his head in his hands. His ears are magenta. 

“You don’t know—Michael Wheeler, how have you neglected your boyfriend duties enough for your poor girlfriend to not know what French kissing is?” Dustin asks incredulously. 

Mike’s words come out muffled against his hands. 

“Because, again, we’re not rushing each other into anything. El hasn’t been exposed to all this stuff for a long time like we have and I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable.”

“That’s definitely the right way to look at it,” Will assures him. “Besides, Hop would kill you if El came home with a hickey.”

Mike opens his mouth—to either express his horror at this vision or to explain further why his and El’s relationship is pure and innocent and perfect compared to the rest of the world—but Dustin interrupts him. 

“I mean, I’m just saying you need to get a move on, man, because there are already a lot of guys willing to teach her what you won’t. Our El here is getting quite the reputation as being a fresh hot piece of ass, and not everyone is gonna wait around and be honorable. It’s better coming from you.”

“Hot piece of…ass?” El repeats. Mike cuts off Dustin’s explanation with a murderous look.

“If you explain what that means to her, I swear to God they won’t even find your remains.”

El is the one to interrupt them this time, because Mike actually looks like he might lunge at Dustin, and she doesn’t want them to fight over her. 

“French kissing is the eating kiss. The one that leads to sex.” 

Mike chokes on his tongue, his face completely purple. Lucas makes a half delighted, half horrified noise in the back of his throat, and Will groans. Dustin just smirks at her. 

“I mean, it doesn’t always need to lead to sex, but it’s definitely sexier than Eskimo kisses.” 

“And it feels good?” El asks dubiously. She likes to feel good, and Mike definitely does that to her, but she can’t see how French kissing could ever come close to feeling as good as the whisper of Mike’s eyelashes on her cheek, his thumbs brushing the sides of his face as their noses touch, the dark, deep look he gets in his eyes when she stares into them, the world fading around them. “It looks…slimy.”

“I mean, I guess it is slimy, you have someone else’s fucking tongue in your mouth, but it’s a good slimy. You won’t get it until you try it.”

Dustin starts going on about Camille some more, about how “far she’s gone” (a phrase El thinks means how many types of kissing you have tried), and El tunes him out, having already heard most of it from Max. She thinks instead about how nice it feels when Mike kisses her the normal way, just his lips against hers, and how sometimes it fills her with tingles all over that make it hard for her to focus afterward. It’s a funny feeling—like she’s hungry, but not for food. She’s hungry for something she doesn’t understand, except that it gives her a funny, tight feeling deep in her stomach that she both wants to increase and go away at the same time. Maybe French kissing is more of that feeling. Maybe that’s why people do it, even though it’s slimy. 

El doesn’t find out firsthand until Mike’s fifteenth birthday. El’s already had hers (she picked November 3rd, the day Mike found her) and had had a nice little party at the Byers’. Just her, Hop, Max, the boys, the rest of the Byers family, and Nancy and Steve. It had been one of her favorite days. She knows birthdays are supposed to be special—a day when everyone tries to make you feel as happy as possible.

So El understands why Mike's mom is upset when his dad isn't there for Mike's party. She doesn't understand why Ted isn't home, but she knows that this is not supposed to be a thing that parents miss. Mike does his best to entertain his friends, smiling and laughing at all of Dustin's jokes as he bounces Holly in his lap, but El knows him well enough to see the little furrow between his brow and know that he is upset.

Ted doesn't show up until the cake has been eaten and everyone except Dustin and El have left. Dustin is just heading out when Ted comes in, and Karen swoops in on him with her hands on her hips, her eyes cold. El can imagine little black lines all around her, the ones they use in the comics to show when someone’s angry. 

“Well look who finally decided to show up. Missing your own son’s birthday party is a new parenting high, even for you, Ted.” 

Dustin takes one look at Mike's parents, tension crackling between them, and flees through the door with one last "Happy Birthday, Mike!" over his shoulder.

“I know I’m late, but I’m sure Michael understands that keeping a steady income is just as important as a birthday party. He’s fifteen, Karen, not seven.”

“You expect me to believe you were out this late working?”

“I was working, which is more than I can say for you.” 

El takes one look at the unhappy, pinched look on Mike’s face, his knuckles white as he grips the edge of the table, and swoops up Holly, who giggles in delight, her attention successfully diverted. 

“Come on, Holly Jolly,” El says, tugging on her pigtail. “I want you to draw me a pretty picture, okay?” 

“I wanna draw you and me as princesses,” Holly says, her cheeks dimpling as she grins. 

“Now Karen, I don’t say anything about those high school boys you flirt with, or the cologne you come home smelling like, I don’t say a goddamn thing about you obviously screwing some punk jailbait—“

“Stay here,” El tells Mike firmly. His nod is tight, and he doesn’t look at her. It hurts El’s heart to see, and she wants to fix it, but first: Holly. 

When Holly is situated in her room and working on drawings (El had gently encouraged her to do a series of her and El as all of her favorite princesses, to keep her attention diverted a little longer), El goes back downstairs to get Mike. 

“Mike. _Mike._ ”

He finally looks up at her, his eyes shining a touch too brightly. El takes his face in her hands, her thumbs sweeping the swell of his cheekbones. Mike’s eyes flutter shut at her touch, his lips parting. 

“Let’s go downstairs,” she says. 

He follows her the way Holly might follow her—as if he’s afraid he’ll get lost in his own home if he lets go of her hand. El almost wishes she could carry him. She is so used to Mike being the grown up, the one she learns from, the one she trusts to protect her. It is strange to suddenly see him look so young and lost, to have something he needs that she can easily give him. 

The second the basement door is shut, El looks at him again. He’s standing in the middle of the room, staring at nothing. El knows what to do. She places her hands on his chest and pushes him gently back onto the couch, sitting next to him the moment he’s settled. She takes both his hands and looks him in the eye. 

“Hey.” It’s what Mike says when El goes into the other place, the bad place, and has trouble getting back to the here-and-now. 

Mike finally looks at her, and El doesn’t hesitate. She takes his face again, her thumb finding the soft place where his neck meets the sharp cut of his jaw. She can feel his pulse fluttering against her touch like the wings of a trapped baby bird. She leans forward slowly, giving him time to back away, just in case this isn’t the right time for this. Whatever Mike needs now, El wants to give him. If he wants space, that’s okay. It’s all okay. 

He doesn’t lean away. He says her name once, so softly she can barely hear it, and it sounds like a prayer. 

“El.” 

El kisses him. 

He kisses her back. The firm pressure of his lips is as wonderful as it was at the Snow Ball. Low, simmering heat breaks over El’s skin in a familiar wave. She lets the kiss last for one second, two, and just as Mike starts to pull away, she opens her mouth against his. 

For a moment, Mike freezes against her, his eyes flying open. El tries to tell him what she wants with hers. _This is okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re okay. I love you, and nothing else needs to matter right now._ Mike understands. He always does. His mouth opens against hers and El makes a soft, surprised sound that is halfway between a gasp and a moan because _oh,_ his mouth is pure, silken heat and his hands are tightening around her waist and this is why couples get detention time and time again in the halls, why they never learn their lesson. 

Mike’s tongue finds hers naturally, and it is not slimy at all. He tastes like his birthday cake; chocolate with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting and he is so close to her, part of him literally inside of her, all of El’s senses exploding with _Mike Mike Mike._ Her hands in his thick, dark hair, his thumb making contact with the sliver of skin across her navel where her shirt has ridden up, exploding her whole belly into new goosebumps, the low, breathy noises he’s making. El feels fused to him, like she couldn’t break away if she tried, but it is not a bad thing at all. She wants to feel this close to Mike forever. 

Eventually, though, even El needs to breathe, and she breaks away with a gasp. Mike groans, his eyes darker than she’s ever seen them.

“Fuck, El.”

He opens his mouth to say something more, struggles for a moment with words while El waits expectantly, her mouth wet and warm and missing him. He settles for diving in again, both of them immediately seeking the slick heat of an even deeper kiss. 

This time, their noses bump awkwardly, but Mike just turns his head, his mouth seeking hers with even more intensity. El squirms, wanting to get closer to him but unsure how. Her whole body has that tight feeling, like a spring is coiling inside her in smaller and smaller circles, spiraling towards something. Something good that is just starting to show on the horizon, but still mostly out of reach. 

El breaks away again, wanting to chase that feeling, and wondering if it is happening for Mike as much as it is for her. His eyes have opened again at the loss of her mouth, and he tries to lean in for the third time, but El ducks her own head slightly, ignoring Mike’s broken noise of protest, to kiss that soft area under his ear. 

She’d had the idea from how strongly she feels his pulse there, and the image of the bright shiny mark on Dustin’s neck—the hickey, he called it—flashes through her mind, only this time it is on Mike, stark and rosy against his pale skin. Marking him as all hers, the person who makes El’s life wonderful, and who she makes feel good in turn.  
The gasp that comes from Mike’s lips when her lips meet his skin sends an electric bolt of heat through her, and El hums against his skin, her thighs squeezing together instinctively. 

She wants to hear him make that noise again. El draws away from his neck just long enough to give him a wicked smile. Mike groans, babbling almost incoherently. 

“Fuck, El, you—fuck, you’re so—“

“Mike,” El says firmly, secretly loving that she’s reduced him to such a state. Mike is most verbal person she knows; the best at telling stories, the best at explaining things—it’s fun to see him like this for a change, struggling to string words together because of how good El is making him feel. 

“It’s okay,” she says, kissing him lightly on the lips before returning to his neck. This time she sucks, and Mike moans. His throat vibrates with the sound against her lips, and El can’t hold back a noise of her own in turn. Her skin feels two sizes too small for her body, so tight she wants to crawl out of it and into Mike, somehow, and she squirms to get closer to him, Mike trying to keep her from coming into full contact with his lap. 

“El, El, we need to—“

El attacks his neck again, kissing and sucking a path to the place where his throat bobs every time he swallows, then down to the collarbone, and Mike loses his powers of speech again. El wants to keep him there, gasping under her, for as long as she can, but it doesn't seem fair to not let him say what he wants to.

"El, we're moving too fast," Mike says, looking like he wishes he were saying anything else. "Do you, I mean. What's the plan?" 

El sits back, furrowing her brows as she thinks of the answer.

“I don’t know,” she admits. Words are still hard for her under normal circumstances, but now, with her whole body pulsing with a heat so intense her brain feels like it’s melting in the best way, they seem a near impossibility. “I just…Mike. I need—“

“El, whatever you need, I…I want to give it to you,” Mike says, stroking her face. “I want to give you everything you want, sweetheart, but we’re too…we can’t have sex.”

“We can’t have sex,” El repeats. She knows that. She doesn’t want that. But she does want something. Mike looks concerned. 

“El, you know what I mean when I say—“

“I know what sex is, Mike, I’m not stupid,” El says, giving him a look. “Penis goes in vagina, makes babies or gives you diseases if you aren’t careful, you need to wait until you’re ready, blah blah. I don’t want you to put your penis in my vagina.”

She expects this to reassure him, but Mike just looks like he can’t decide whether to laugh or choke. 

“Okay, I’m glad you understand. I didn’t mean to condescend to you, I just wanted to make sure you were on the same page,” he tells her earnestly, taking both her hands. 

“What is ‘condescend’?”

"It means to talk down to, to talk to someone like they're stupid, or really young. One of the reasons you’re Holly’s favorite is because you don’t condescend to her.”

“Okay.” El understands. Mike doesn’t condescend to her, he just wants to be sure she knows what he’s talking about so she doesn’t get confused. But she wants to return to the matter at hand. “We can’t have sex.” 

“No, we can’t.”

“But we can kiss.” 

“We can kiss as long as you want to.” Mike even leans in to prove his point, but El stops him. 

“I want…” she thinks. “Is there something…halfway?” 

“Halfway between sex and kissing? Yeah, there’s stuff.” Mike’s blushing, but he doesn’t look worried like he did before. “It should…um, it usually kind of comes naturally, I guess. I think it usually happens when people are kissing like we just were and sometimes other stuff happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

That makes sense. When Joyce had given El The Talk, she'd stressed how important it was that things seem natural, that she shouldn't force anything to happen too soon.

"Okay. I think I can wait until it ‘comes naturally'," she says, parroting his words back to him with another smile that wants to be a smirk.

“I don’t think you’ll have to wait long,” Mike says, eyes sparkling. “Do you want to just kiss some more?” 

"Yes. I think this is my favorite kind of kiss. Even more than Eskimos and butterflies," El replies. Though really, all three are her favorites. This kind of kiss is a good kiss, but a private kiss. A kiss you need to be ready for. Eskimo and butterfly kisses are nice kisses for when you want to feel close but don’t have the privacy, time, or energy for this kind of kiss.

“Oh? Is your experiment over then?” Mike asks, raising his eyebrows. El pretends to think for a long moment. 

“I think I’m going to need more data,” she decides, and Mike’s smile lights up his whole face. 

“Well, in the name of science, I’m happy to participate.” 

And before he kisses her again, Mike whispers, his voice soft as El’s favorite feather pillow:

“Thank you, El. This is the best birthday present.”

"You're welcome," El says, because she remembers her manners. "But it's nice for me too. I like kissing you."

She does it again to prove her point. It's slower, this time, almost lazy, her trying to memorize what it feels like drink him in like this, him rubbing lazy circles over her back. And that's okay, after all. Maybe it's nice to play with that edge, with wanting and wanting without a clear end for now. Maybe when that end comes, it will be even better for waiting. After all, they're young and they love each other. There's nothing but time.

**Author's Note:**

> that's it, and it's like 90% fluff and schmoop what can i say i'm trash for mileven being adorable as shit. also for those of you reading all sorts of far away this fic is the birth of me desperately wanting dustin to have a hot cheerleader girlfriend because the poor boy deserves better than stacey. so this is proto-camille!
> 
> comments, kudos, and everything else are super appreciated!! love you guys! this fandom is really nice and supportive!! <3


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